Best Friends Are Perfect Backup
by celiacprincess
Summary: NJACS Sequel: Cammie's summer search for answers leads her to Val, who has a few questions of her own. Together they search for the missing piece; the thing that links their pasts together. Invisibility is the key, and there are no do-overs.
1. Chapter 1

**CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR **_**Only the Good Spy Young**_**. **

For the past year, I had been counting. I counted the minutes until classes were over and I could spend my free time actually learning something. I counted the different ways I could have gotten out of Timmons Academy, with or without a disguise, closed toed shoes, and a very good replica of the Napotine patches used by Gallagher Girls. I even counted the simple things, like the number of times Leslie Bowden smoothed her hair down in one period (it got rather frizzy, with all the rain London gets).

So naturally, I counted my steps as I ran along my usual trail in the park. I say _usual_, but it wasn't. Nothing was usual anymore, and actually, that was usual. I didn't get to go home after Christmas. The Circle got close to Cammie, and my "parents" freaked out. Understandable, because it was here in London, not in the States. I didn't hear anything from Zach, or Cammie, or Bex, all of whom were here. Zach didn't even come by for Christmas, but then again, I wasn't even sure he was here at all. When I asked, I was told that it was classified. Now it was summer, I hadn't heard anything from anyone in months, and was seriously starting to worry.

I'd like to say what happened next was a result of excellent training and a vast improvement on my part as far as the whole spy thing goes. Really, though, I think it was just because I was thinking about her already. Whatever the case, I didn't even have to do a double take at the girl in jeans and a t-shirt in the middle of the park to know that Cammie had come to visit. I made eye contact with her, but didn't slow down as I passed her. I did, however, keep my eye out for her backup. After ten minutes, all I knew was that I didn't have a tail, and Cammie didn't have backup. The next thing I knew, she was on the path running towards me, and pulled off the best impromptu brush in history (or, _my_ history, at least). I kept running, and managed to get the note out and read it quickly and without anyone seeing, and then it was gone. I'd gotten used to the constant dampness to the point where I wasn't even surprised that it reacted with the Evapopaper.

Per her request, I met her back by the park bench she had been hovering over before. She was already there, and I could see that the shirt was reversible. Cam caught me looking and grinned.

"Helps when I need to lose a tail," she said. I nodded. "So what do you know?"

I shook my head. "Absolutely nothing." Cammie's smile faded.

"Val, really. Have you talked to Zach?"

"Nope. He said he'd be here for Christmas but he never showed. I heard that you and Bex were here, but after a close call, I had no chance of meeting up with you guys."

Cammie sighed. "We need to talk. Actually, I need to talk, and you need to listen." Almost as an afterthought, she added "And give me answers."

I nodded, and we stood up. We used every trick in the book (a fact that Liz would have verified if she had been here with said book) to make it to what I assumed was Cammie's safe house. I suggested we go back to my house, but she declined that before the words were even out of my mouth. Finally, when we sat down at the little table, I dared to ask.

"Cam, what do _you_ know?"

"Val, listen. I can't go to your house. I'm willing to bet that now it's not even safe for you to go back to your house." I opened my mouth, and she cut me off. "It's a really long story, but you need to know. I'm here alone. Now I'm with you, if you want. Actually you're with me, but you get the picture. Do you want in?"

"Definitely. I need to get out of here."

"Great." She paused. "Are you and Zach really twins?"

I blinked. "Yes? I mean, yes. Not a question. Why?"

"Because you know how the Circle tried to get me?" I nodded. "Well… Zach's mom was the women in charge. She was in Boston, and at election night, and… And she was the one torturing Mr. Soloman in the tombs at Blackthorne. So if she's his mom, she's your mom too."

"What the bloody he-"

"Zach knew." I just looked at her. "He knew that she was his mom. He _knew_. The Circle recruits at Blackthorne. Zach was at Boston. He could have warned us. I don't know why he didn't. _She_," Cammie spat the word out like it tasted bad, which, given some of the technology I had heard of, was actually possible. "Was a Gallagher Girl. There's no hiding from the Circle. You were the only person I could think of that had managed to avoid them, and you're _related _to one." She gave a sharp laugh. "So I had to find you."

"That's why we left." It came out in a whisper. "That's why Zach got to stay and I didn't. He knew, so they couldn't protect him. He would just lead them to me too. That's probably why I didn't go to Gallagher in seventh grade either." I shook my head. Everything I knew about my family had been steady, until I got involved in the whole spy thing. Then, it was turned upside-down and shaken, and now, after it had finally managed to settle, was being flipped over again, taking my brother with it. "Cam?" She raised her eyebrows in acknowledgement. "We have to beat them." She grinned, and I kept going. "We have to find out who they are, where they are, what they want, and what they've done and to who. And," I added as an afterthought, "get back to Gallagher in time for class."

"So you're in?"

"I'm in."

"Great. Then there's something you need to see." She pulled out a sketch and a photo. "I drew the sketch from the memory of the tombs, that's why it's kind of odd looking. The photo was pulled from the newsfeed of the _incident _in Boston. They're both her."

I had never seen this woman in my life. However, I had seen her in a picture. She was my mom.

Cammie read my face like a book. "So it's true."

"We have a few pictures. Actually they're pulled from the hospital security cameras. She's in a wheelchair and very pregnant." I looked up and closed my eyes. "The people I'm living with aren't my parents. Zach told me that when I was at Blackthorne."

"That wasn't Blackthorne…" Cammie said quickly.

"Good point. Well, when we were at their fake little school, Zach told me that our parents had gone on a mission when we were little, and didn't come back. Mom smelled different. But she wasn't this woman. They said that she just looked different because she lost all the baby weight. I thought that was kind of an extreme change but I trusted them." I rubbed my eyes. "I don't know what happened to her at the hospital. The system went down twenty minutes after she went in, and was down until the next day. I tried looking into an off-site system, but it was disabled that week for repairs."

"Another dead end," Cam shrugged. "We're just getting started."

"Wait. You saw Zach, right?" Cam nodded. "How was he?"

"Under the circumstances, not too bad. He finished the semester at Gallagher. My mom said that he didn't have anywhere safe to go. I wonder what she knows about you…" she shook her head. "Anyway. I have a plan, and it does actually involve you going back to your house to get your stuff, and leaving without giving your parents a reason to look for you."

I had my doubts. I really did. But as I got in the limo alone, waving to my "parents", I couldn't believe just how smart Cammie was. The whole goal was to keep me safe, right? Well, what could be better that a CIA/MI6 training summer camp? It was wonderfully documented, with the right signatures and conformation phone calls from the right people. I was packed and stocked up on spy stuff and money, and ready to leave within the week. I don't know how she did it.

The limo dropped me off at the airport, where I caught a taxi to the train station. I took it to a couple blocks from the park and walked. I should mention that even though I was packed for a summer camp, all I really had was a backpack and purse. Cam had a backpack too, but she wasn't alone. There was some old guy with her, and I was immediately on guard. Cammie wouldn't socialize with a random stranger. Before I could do anything, she waved me over.

"This is Derrick. He was telling me about this kidnapping attempt in the States. It was in like, Flowerville, Virginia."

"Roseville," the man corrected.

"Yeah, that. Freaky, huh?"

"Definitely!"

We said our goodbyes and walked away, still processing the information. Cammie told me that she told him she was Liz, and he told her the story. Gallagher had been sent into a Code Black, but no one had been caught. I found it odd, since no one was at the school, but apparently the news didn't know that. Macey was still big news, since her mother had just written a book, and everyone assumed that she was the target. Ten minutes later, Cammie and I realized that we had a bigger problem.

The safe house was no longer safe.

**(A/N: So here's chapter one. I'll look up all the GG terms tomorrow to make sure they're spelled right, because I'm lazy and sleepy right now. It's good to be back. YJHTL is out, but some of the stuff about Timmons is the same. Like her uber cool schedule. **

**For those of you that have been with me for a while, I have a new theatre teacher. She's great, but I still talk to my old one. I went to Nationals for BPA and we placed 7****th**** in Team. I was Puck in AMND One Act. It was awesome. I'm a senior! Anywho, I'm going to bed. Reviews would make my day. –cass)**


	2. Chapter 2

**(A/N: *ducks to avoid cyber-projectiles. And real projectiles, just in case.*)**

"Oh this is not good." I looked over at my friend and realized that she wasn't talking about the not-so-safe house. She was staring at her cell phone.

"Cam? I know you're better at this whole spy thing than me, but is it really a good time to-"

"Hang on, Val. Gallagher's going into a Code Black again."

Five minutes later, we were sitting on a bus, more or less getting the heck out of Dodge. Cammie had decided that there was nothing important in the safe house anyway, and we had made good use of the pedestrian cover to get out of the area. While it probably would have been smart to deal with the two Circle members attempting to break into the safe house, we hadn't been sure if they had backup and didn't really want to stick around to find out. Cammie had just been sleeping there – her stuff was in the backpack that was now sitting on her lap – and I was very glad that I had the same thing. We had gone over as much as we could in public, and I had gotten the basics. When Cammie had taken off, she had managed to program her cell phone to react to the Gallagher security system. She couldn't do anything to affect it, but she could see its current state.

Which was, well, Black.

Then suddenly, her phone beeped, alerting us to a change. The system was no longer under a Code Black. It was perfectly normal. Cammie looked confused.

"There's no way," she said. "It can't switch on and off that fast." I raised an eyebrow, wondering how, exactly, she knew this. As always, Cam knew what I was thinking. "It has a built-in, un-override-able feature that makes it impossible to shift out of Code Black mode for at least thirty minutes. The basis to that is that we'll have at least thirty minutes to get the younger kids to safety, brief whoever's going to be defending the school, and get our supplies together. We also have a system that makes getting all of that done in thirty minutes possible. So if they're waiting right outside, hacking our system, we'll still have thirty minutes. This has only been ten."

I shook my head. "Well maybe they broke the system. I know it isn't likely," I rushed on, "but what else could it be?"

Cammie's phone beeped again, declaring that Gallagher had shifted into a Code Red this time.

"I think someone's hacking my cell phone."

I gave her a sideways glance as someone behind me coughed. "Really." Cam nodded and reached up to pull the stop. "That's never good."

It wasn't. It got even worse when mystery cougher exited the bus along with us. It could have been a coincidence, but Cammie and I both knew better.

Luckily, we also _were _better. We shouldered our bags and fell into step with a group of power walkers. While we were clearly still visible – and therefore trackable – we were moving quickly en masse. It should have been a workout, but adrenaline was already starting to make its way through my system and from the look on Cam's face, it was time. When the group reached the busy intersection, we branched off, this time crossing the street with a group of tourists. We fit in better with them given our backpacks, so we switched to American accents effortlessly. I commented on a girl's camera while Cammie complimented another woman on her choice of guidebook.

"Look!" I said suddenly, pointing an obvious finger down the block. "That diner is famous!"

"It is?" Another girl asked excitedly. "Why?"

"Oh!" Guidebook lady responded. "I know. It says here that during-"

And they were off. I slipped into a quiet coffee shop while Cammie bent down to tie her shoe. We both watched as the man that had kept up with us for over thirty minutes followed the group of tourists down the block, all of them disappearing into what I knew was a tiny restaurant. I felt a bit of relief, but my time away from the spy world hadn't made me forget. We worked in teams, and so did they. The chances were good that we were still being watched. So I bought a cup of coffee while Cammie leafed through postcards. I slipped out the Employee's Only door while Cam used a bathroom. Seconds later, she came tumbling out of a window, and I reacted to the hand reaching for me faster than I would have expected, being away for so long. It was a waste of a perfectly delicious cup of coffee, but the scalding liquid did manage to buy me a few seconds to weigh my options of an illegal move. I heard a grunt, a snap that sounded far too much like breaking bone for my liking, and then a quick laugh from Cammie, and I went for it, realizing that by the time anyone found our tails, we would be long gone.

It's not like they'd be in any position to talk.

While I was flipping and kicking and twisting away at a very complicated and painful maneuver that was only taught because we had to know not to use it lightly, Cammie was checking her attacker's pockets. While the details of our actions are probably classified, the end result was two out of commission baddies and some very scary evidence that we were, and had been, made.

There were pictures. First of Cammie by herself, then of me. There were pictures of the both of us, talking to the guy in the park (we alerted MI6 anonymously that he might be in some danger), and then of the safe house. One thing was very clear.

We needed to get out of London.

**(A/N: Okay so don't kill me! I've been very absent for a very long time and a bunch has changed. Like the fact that I'm in college. Oh that's weird to write. And there's a new book coming out…sometime. So those of you that were here for NJACS know what's coming next... drum roll anyone? YES! I HAVE A DEADLINE! I will be finished with this story before the next book comes out! *cue happy dance* erm…but reviews would help. Pwease? Oh. And I have a HP fanfic up. If you're a Potterhead, check it out! –c.)**


	3. Chapter 3

**(A/N: Let's not talk about how long I've been gone; I've written a longer chapter to make up for that. We're going to pretend that this is what Cam did on her mystery summer. Also note that I'm going to keep it as close to the books as possible. SO… this is between book 4 and 5. Enjoy!) **

We went to Paris (on fake passports). I hadn't been there in a while and Cammie was being very mysterious about whether she had been there at all (I figured she probably had, but didn't want to get into the details. Our lives, I was learning, had some very strange details), so we toured for a little while and then popped into a cute little grocery store before locating the safe house we knew to be just a short distance from the Eiffel Tower. We didn't have any tails when we got there. That we knew for sure. I made spaghetti. Cam used my laptop to access the Gallagher system (after, I'm sure, adding several just-for-the-occasion features). Fifteen minutes later, I heard her sigh. I glanced over, not really in a position to go look for myself, and she took the cue.

"I shut my phone off so they couldn't GPS trace us. It also gave us an answer. While we were dealing with our… extracurricular… activities, Gallagher switched between the codes several times, all faster than their default times, which means that my phone was doing its job and not giving me false information. _That _means that Gallagher really is switching codes. Students aren't there, so it really shouldn't be as huge of a problem. The faculty can take care most things, and the school does half of the protecting by itself, but…" She trailed off.

"Cam? What?"

"What if Zach's there? What if the Circle is trying to get to him?" Cammie said, clearly assembling her own thoughts as she was telling me this. "When I… left… he was there. My mom said that he really didn't have anywhere else safe to go… That was a couple weeks ago."

"So he stayed there over break, they found out, and are now trying to get in." I took a breath. "To get him."

Then something clicked.

"Cammie, he couldn't have stayed there _all _alone. He has to eat. Unless they gave him full access to the kitchen and a summer's worth of food, someone else has to be there."

Cam nodded her head at this. "Okay, so he's not there alone. But chances are pretty good that he's there."

It was at least worth considering. I knew my brother pretty well – or I thought I did, which was just going to have to work for now. Zach could hack with the best of them (actually, he could probably hack the best of them). I suggested the idea that maybe Zach wasn't actually _at _Gallagher, but nearby, and was the one behind the code changes that Cammie's cell phone was reporting. We went with that for a while, trying to trace the origin of the changes, but it was difficult given the fact that we were pretty far away and had no real way of knowing if we were right.

"Hey Cam?" I said, just as the spaghetti was about done. "When you said you left… what exactly did you mean?"

She sighed and then looked up at me from the table. "I guess I owe you a few answers. It's kind of complicated, Val, but I ran away."

I blinked. I had expected a lot of things, but this wasn't one.

"So… when you said you were here alone, you really meant it. The girls aren't out there on comms or running a side mission or anything. They…" I cut myself off as realization dawned on me. "They have no idea where you are, do they?"

She shook her head. "Not a clue." She paused, reconsidered, and then amended her words slightly. "They might have a clue, but I'm positive that they haven't found me yet. Otherwise, they'd be here."

"Why, Cammie?" It could have been about anything, and even I wasn't too sure what exactly I was asking.

She shook her head. "I'm dangerous. People around me are getting hurt. Mr. Solomon hasn't woken up. Abby got shot. Who knows what they would have done with Macey if we hadn't gotten away in Boston. But the thing is – they don't want to kill me. They don't want to kill Zach, either, and I'm going to guess that if they found out who you are, they wouldn't kill you either.

"The people with us, however… those people, they'll have no problem killing." She shrugged. I left Zach behind, but I needed help. I needed backup. But Val," Cammie's face changed slightly. "If you call anyone to tell them where I am, I won't be here by the time they get here."

I studied Cammie. I had a couple options. I could disregard what Cam just said and call her mom – or Bex, Liz, or Macey, and give them a heads up that she was in Paris but wouldn't be here by morning.

Or I could stay with her and stay quiet. We'd both get answers and have a better chance of staying safe.

In the end, I did that. I'm guessing you already guessed that – what kind of friend would I be if I just let her go off alone again? I'm sure a lot of people will have questions for me when they find out I blatantly didn't tell anyone where we were, but at the time, it seemed like the best choice. I wasn't quite as good as Liz at statistics, but I knew that the odds of her staying alive through the summer were at least thirty percent higher if she was with someone else.

And currently, I was the only choice.

I ate my spaghetti in silence, processing what I'd just learned while Cammie did things on my laptop. Suddenly, a light bulb came one.

"Give me that laptop, please."

Cammie slid it over to me without a word, either knowing that I wouldn't have asked if it wasn't important, or jumping at the chance to have an excuse to stop searching for a minute. I brought up the programs that would allow me to run a type of reverse facial recognition – I'd give the program a picture, and it would scan video feeds for the face. It didn't try to find out who the person was. It was just trying to find the facial match. I linked it to every security camera in Roseville just to get my bases covered, and then went to work hacking into the school's surveillance. It was surprisingly less difficult than I remembered it being, so I took the time to route my signal through as many countries as possible AND set up a program that would tell me if anyone was trying to track it. By this point, Cammie had come around the table to see what I was doing. As if on cue, she grabbed a sticky note out of her backpack and put it over the lens of the webcam – just in case they found me before I had time to get out of the system.

Once I had safely accessed the live security feeds, I linked them into the facial recognition program, which was currently searching for not only my brother, but Cam's mom, Mr. Solomon, Cam's roommates, and per Cammie's request, her aunt Abby and Agent Townsend.

At this point, she also reminded me that Solomon was in the school, sleeping, which meant that our panic earlier about Zach being alone was a complete waste of time – there were definitely other people there. However, it just made it seem more likely that Zach would be there.

It also increased the severity of someone trying to break into the school. There were a lot more people at risk than we thought.

"Where did you go when you left the school?" I asked.

"Mr. Solomon's cabin. I… I needed to think. Plan." She looked at me. "And decide if I was going to come to you."

"Which you did."

She nodded. "Now I know I should have dyed my hair before I left, but I guess I'll just have to do that before we leave here. You probably will, too," she added, almost as an afterthought.

I nodded, and then changed the subject. "Cam, I don't think Zach is in danger. I mean," I said, thinking about it. "I don't think he's in specific danger."

"You don't think he's the reason for the code changes?" she asked, a mixture of surprise and confusion (and a bit of relief) crossing over her face.

I shook my head. "Oh, I'm pretty sure he's the reason for it. But I don't think he's in danger." I let Cammie realize what I meant.

"He's the one causing it," she slapped a hand to her forehead. "Of course he is. He can _hack_." Cammie handed me the cell phone-like device she'd been carrying with her, and I plugged it into my laptop. Sure enough, a few keystrokes later, we determined that there was absolutely nothing wrong with her phone, which meant that the system that sent out alerts on the Academy's status was probably being tampered. This was pretty much confirmed by the fact that our eyes inside the mansion indicated absolutely nothing out of the ordinary.

"I think…" I took a deep breath and sighed. "I think Zach is trying to scare you into coming back." I paused as a much scarier thought crossed my mind. "I really hope it's Zach, Cam. Because anyone else doing this knows two things." Cammie looked at me, but was silent. I'd gotten better at reading people, but in that moment, I couldn't tell if my friend actually didn't know what I was about to say, or didn't want to be the one to say it. "One, that you have that thing, and two, that you're getting updates from the school." I paused for a couple minutes, and I knew Cammie was running through the possible options – people that fit both categories.

I knew that, because I was doing the same thing.

"Cam?" she looked back at me. "They'd also have to know that you'd care enough about the school _during the summer _to think about going back."

**(A/N: So I hope you enjoyed it. I'm finding it increasingly difficult to fit my original plan for this story into what we know happened but stick with me. Also: in case anyone is keeping track, I'm about to start the second semester of my second year in college… but I'm classified as a junior. :D x)**


End file.
